Onetime DC employee who wrote a terrible Adam Strange tale turns up again

The Comics Journal interviewed Richard Bruning, one of DC's former managers (and husband of the onetime editor Karen Berger), who, while it goes curiously unmentioned, had a handful stories to his credits, including a repellent miniseries from 1990 starring Adam Strange, which saw humanoid co-star Alanna killed for the sake of it, though that story was reversed several years later. Though I couldn't seem to find any mention of Adam Strange here, the discussion does bring up the following, along with early efforts in digital artistry, and how Paul Levitz actually thought this guy was worth keeping for employment:

There had been a couple of novelty efforts at computer art in comics by that point. There was Shatter for First Comics, and then an Iron Man graphic novel [1988’s Crash] at Marvel…

Pepé Moreno approached us after Shatter came out, and we did Batman: Digital Justice. I got to work with him very closely on it, and I started learning a lot about how those tools could work. He and Mike Saenz [artist of Shatter and Crash] were pushing the boundaries of what these machines could handle. I don't even know how they pulled off what they did, and it was certainly crude in some ways, but it was a necessary step to get to a technological level that would give you art worth looking at. All those things convinced me that this was a real turning point in my industry publication and communication. I was getting very impatient with DC dragging its heels. I had become friends with another graphic designer, Dean Motter from Canada, and we had been talking about forming a business and opening up studios in Manhattan. He was moving down from Toronto and wanted to live in New York.

That was around 1990?

Yeah. I decided to go out on a limb and resign, and then set up a studio with Dean. Fortunately for me, Paul liked what I did, and he signed me up to an exclusive contract for the comic book business [at DC]. I couldn't work for any other publisher, but I got paid every month whether I worked or not, which was kind of cool, and it certainly helped financially in getting a business started.

You must have made a compelling pitch to him.

I didn't pitch it, he pitched it to me. I had a very successful run for those five years at DC, and I had become fairly high profile within the company, which was a very small company at that point. I think Paul saw something in me, and he didn't want Marvel to have it. Basically, he thought it was to his advantage as a businessman to keep me off the market for the competition. That was an incredible honor, and I left on good terms with him. He was happy just to have me still doing freelance work for DC, and not working for Marvel or anybody else.

What's curious about the mention of "freelance" work is that it sounds like Mr. Bruning's obscuring the time when he wrote the aforementioned Adam Strange miniseries, Man of Two Worlds, which was pretty shoddy, and while Alanna's fate was reversed later on, as noted, that doesn't change the fact that it was artistically an embarrassment. But that's exactly why it's a shame if Comics Journal's writer and Bruning himself deliberately obscured his writing portfolio and all but limited the discussion to the business side of things. That only suggests they don't have the courage to discuss what mistakes were made in writing, and possibly art, and how to improve upon said mistakes in the future.

As for computerized artwork, there may have been some achievements, including the aforementioned Iron Man special, but some of the more recent efforts from the past 20 years or so are utterly worthless, recalling an artist named Adi Granov who specialized in stuff like that for Marvel. Other artists like Greg Horn only seemed to do cover art, and while that alone might be okay, it hardly helps in the long run. Digital art may have some potential, but Marvel decidedly didn't make good use of it by the turn of the century. Now, here's where he first brings up how he had a role in getting rid of DC's symbol that was retained from 1977-2005, though recently was restored, certainly on the DC Finest archives. It was the Vertigo line where this first occurred:

Tell me about the process of developing the Vertigo design. Was the idea that you wanted to set this off as visually something distinct from the main DC branding?

Yes, that was one of the things we decided early on. We did not want the DC bullet on the Vertigo books.

You said that you always had problems with that bullet.

Paul thought that some identification to DC [was necessary]. I didn't integrate it into the Vertigo logo per se, on the covers and such, but there'd be a little “DC” in a different typeface just right above or right below the Vertigo logo on the covers. There was that presence or indicator that DC was part of it. We worked that out with Paul, and it worked out fine. It was just a matter of figuring out how to do a line of books that people know are from DC, that will appeal to people who don't read DC comics. How do we get them to want to try it out? Creating a specific identity was really important.

One of the ways was we did this was to use only painted covers. There were very few painted covers on regular comic books, partially because they are not economically feasible, and also because people wanted their line art to maintain [consistency] for the superhero titles. We were able to start commissioning painters to do covers, and that immediately gave the book a different feel and look. The editorial stuff was all Karen.

Oh, I remember some painted covers on books like Avengers and New Teen Titans, and I'll say that those examples were among the better of their kind, if only because they weren't forced, unlike the disgraced Neil Gaiman's Sandman series, which featured stunningly dull cover illustrations, whether painted or not. Why Bruning and company seemed to think it was such a big deal for an imprint that was allegedly aimed at adults I have no idea, because if they did it almost routinely and by editorial mandate, that risks insulting intellects. And speaking of Sandman, that's mentioned here:

It seems like that was pretty intrinsic to the Vertigo line from the beginning. There was this system, especially for some of the bigger titles like Sandman, where you would get collections coming out almost as soon as the story arcs concluded in the monthlies.

There was a lot of back and forth on that, because it wasn't the normal way that DC did things. They usually let time pass. It wasn't very important when you collected a certain volume of The Flash, but we could tell that we were picking up new readers all the time. We didn't want them to feel out of touch with what was going on in the books as book sales rose. We pushed very hard to get the books collected early. We would go to all the different comic dealer meetings and expos and talk to the retailers about this. The retailers were very explicit about the fact that if we give them volume one, and then three months later we give them volume two, and then volume three, they can push those books out the door all day long. That was the general consensus from the retailers. So we had a really strong ally in that, and it helped us firm that up as a publishing platform.

And a comic as overrated as Sandman truly was is exactly what they just had to collect instantly. All they did was hint they considered the superhero fare less valuable, compared to a comic that was more like a political lecture a number of times. But of course, they won't admit that, will they?

Most annoying of all is how the same publishers wouldn't consider the time may have come for making a shift to paperback/hardcover only, or even Graphic Novel format, if that sums it up better. Why waste so much money on two formats, rather than consider what could become more viable sales and business-wise?

Would you say that Paul was more reluctant to push for collected editions, while Jenette was more gung-ho in favor of it?

Yes. Jenette was by nature, a very gung-ho person. You could get around Paul by going to Jeanette, and then Jenette would convince Paul that it was a good idea, and he'd throw his hands up and go, “All right, whatever you want.” She was a wonderful agent of change. Without Jenette coming into the company when she did, I doubt DC would still be around. I mean, it almost folded in the late ‘70s. It was her enthusiasm and ability to take a risk – and Paul's ability to take a risk, too. He was not risk-averse. What you were trying to do just had better be nailed down. Don’t just wing it.

But, really, it was a good time. And the people there - Dick Giordano and everybody - were very supportive. Superhero editors were never very happy with Vertigo. Somehow they saw it as competition, or I think they saw it as thumbing our noses at the superhero books. That wasn't true. We were just doing our thing.

Oh, were they ever, if we take the Sandman as an example. It's one thing to write an adult comic, but another entirely to act like horror and dark, jarring violence are the only ways to do it. Even the heavier use of profanity in the Vertigo line is enough to raise questions. Now, here's more on what Bruning said about DC's most significant symbol:

You finally got to live out your dream of abandoning the bullet after all that time. And of course, it immediately ran into criticism from just about everywhere.

Yep. There is no pleasing people. I stand by my position that if you are stripping away the nostalgia that all of us, including myself, grew up with, the Bullet, structurally, doesn't work very well. There is too much negative space to it. Everything gets tiny if you start to reduce it. The little hair lines start to break up. It just becomes a little clump of things. And that's why on the design, I wanted a big clear “DC.” Whereas on the Bullet, the “DC” seems unimportant compared to the band with four white stars on it. I've worked with it physically more than most people have. I saw that early on that there were a lot of internal structural problems with the design itself, and I stand by that.

Well that's still nothing compared to the artistic mess DC became by that time, which Bruning and interviewer conveniently left out. But if the "DC Bullet" symbol matters, they were making peanuts out of an otherwise okay symbol for putting on the top corner of the comics, and considering Mr. Bruning otherwise didn't offer much positive by the mid-2000s, it's awfully hypocritical of him to make petty fusses about symbols when the company under DiDio plunged into repellent disasters. Years ago, I didn't even know they called it a "bullet"; I just thought it was a "diagonal" coin-like symbol. Since then, it's made a quiet comeback, now put to use on archives like the DC Finest series. So what's Bruning celebrating anyway?

It's striking to me that here we are in 2026, and yet after all this time, it feels like publishers have thrown up their hands at the idea of finding a new format that specifically works with digital readers and phones, and everything else. At the end of the day, comics still look like comics did 30 years ago.

Right? It's a unique format, and it is hard to get it to accommodate other means of presentation. People who buy comics are aware of a certain amount of a collectible nature in them. I think people wanted to be able to buy and hold the comics, and digital comics never gave them that. They didn't feel like they had anything. Comic book people have a physical collector sort of mentality. And I do, too. I love seeing the books lined up on my shelf. So yeah, that one hasn't been cracked yet.

Interesting they brought this up, because it's an important clue how digital comics on the web haven't caught on successfully, and certainly not the Big Two's. At the same time, they also hint at the misfortune of the speculator market, which largely ruined comicdom beginning in the early to mid-90s. And lest we forget, if they think anybody's going to care about digital when their stories are otherwise bad, they have to think again. When artwork becomes bad, and company wide crossovers keep getting churned out entirely unquestioned, that's why digital sales won't work. Next, wouldn't you know it, Mr. Bruning even lauds a man who turned out to be a bad omen, who ruined the storytelling, and whom Mr. Bruning apparently had a hand in approving for employment:

Around the same time that Zuda launched, Dan DiDio became executive editor at DC. I'm wondering how that played out in terms of your role.

I was one of the few people who interviewed Dan before he was hired. Paul wanted my take on him. Dan is another super smart guy, knows comics inside and out; he had even been doing a little writing, as well. He was pals with Jimmy Palmiotti, so he'd been given a few assignments here and there. Dan had big ambitions. I was very enthusiastic when he came on board, partially because the whole Mike/Denny/Archie thing hadn't worked. And then Archie tragically died from cancer. Denny was just – God love him, but he was kind of checked out. The burden was falling on Mike, but Mike had been carrying the ball for years by himself, and it's a hard job. Marvel couldn't keep anybody in place for a long time as editor-in-chief. There was turnover every year or two.

When you say that Denny was checked out, what do you mean?

I'm not trying to insult Denny. He was very nice man, but he just didn't seem like he was engaged in his work, shall we say. When I had a Batman project that I was working on, he felt a little too hands-off for me. At least, that’s how I view what an editor does, and he had his assistant doing most things. Again, I'm not trying to slag him, but just I think he was tired. He was tired of doing superhero comics.

As far as I'm concerned, Mr. Bruning is belittling O'Neil, though there's valid arguments to make that even O'Neil made serious mistakes. Also note how Bruning, by contrast, is more favorable to DiDio, and that's as telling as it's disgusting. If he's talking about Mike Carlin, it can be validly argued he was a failure, based on how he threw the late Len Strazewski under the bus, and I don't think Archie Goodwin, whom I assume he's alluding to, did a good job with them either, based on his being an editor of the pretentious James Robinson's Starman series. But to say DiDio was galaxies better than them, and knew comics inside-out, when he lacked a moral compass and relied heavily upon crossovers, that's insulting to the intellect.

The other big thing that was going on at that point was the merger of WildStorm into DC, which also brought Jim Lee into the company. How was that playing out?

That was funny. I hadn't been back long when Paul called me and said, “This is quiet. Don't tell anybody, but we're buying WildStorm, and I want you to help be the liaison to their offices to try to integrate them into ours.” We had never tried to do that before. Milestone was the closest thing where they had their own little editorial setup, but Jim had a very well-established shop that did everything. It was Jim that DC seemed to be buying. They were buying more Jim than they were buying WildStorm properties.

I went out to La Jolla every couple of months and just hung around there for three or four days, met with people, asked them if I could help them with anything, and if there was anything New York should be doing for them. We'd go over cover sketches, we'd go over marketing materials, just trying to point them in a direction, not tell them what they had to do.

A lot of good that did in the end. The Wildstorm universe didn't see much success when they bought it, or even tried to merge it into the DCU proper, and for something like 15 years now, it's largely vanished into the land of the forgotten. So what "success" is Mr. Bruning talking about even here?

If you look at the way DC looked when you came in ‘96 and the way it was when you left in 2010, do you think your time there was a success or a failure?

I'd like to think there were few failures. Something can be a success and be a commercial failure. If you achieve your creative goals, then it's a success. If people don't buy it, they're stupid. I was very fortunate there. I just felt like they gave me a lot of rope to hang myself, and I never hung myself, and they backed me. Even if I did something really stupid, they would say, don't do that again, and then let me move on. I'm eternally grateful to people like Jenette, and Paul, and Dick, but Paul probably the most of all. He was the one who brought me back for the 15-year tenure.

I think for me, the end really came when Warner Brothers decided these movies are really fucking big deals. The Batman trilogy was just setting the world on fire. That was the clarion call for corporate to come in from the West Coast and start telling us how the new place was going to be run.

He can say whatever he likes, but I think Mr. Bruning knows the failures were plenty when it comes to the comics themselves, and the company wide crossovers were also a standout example of that. And while the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy may have been a success, there were other adaptations that were failures, like the Jonah Hex and Green Lantern movies, to name early examples in modern times.

And it's very insulting how Mr. Bruning acts like they achieved artistic success in the past 3 decades, when early examples of destruction like the mishandling of Green Lantern can clarify otherwise. For the Flash, the plummeting down came when Geoff Johns became writer. And lest we forget the most repulsive example of the 2000s, Identity Crisis. Mr. Bruning's declaration the audience is "stupid" for not buying is also poor conduct, because you don't use insulting words to describe consumers who aren't interested in your output when it effectively becomes repellent. No doubt, he also has some responsibility for bringing in even more "woke" writers of the times, and artists. Based on that, he's another former employee of the majors who won't be missed, based on what pretentions he foisted upon the DCU, which includes his aforementioned Adam Strange miniseries, which he didn't even have the courage to discuss. That's very telling as to how much he merely whistles in the dark.

I think This Man, This Collection's take on Man of Two Worlds sums up pretty well why the story aged poorly:

In Bruning’s introduction to the collected edition of this story, he defends himself by stating his childhood love of the character, and that he was trying to apply the same approach to storytelling that that Alan Moore applied in Watchmen and Swamp Thing or that Frank Miller did with The Dark Knight Returns. But in his zeal to tell a more “mature” Adam Strange story, Bruning loses track of what made the character appealing in the first place. That opinion was clearly the one that prevailed, given what happened next. After this mini-series, Adam Strange dropped out of the DC Universe completely; his next appearance was a few years later in a supporting role in Green Lantern #75, when Kyle Rayner moved the floating city of Ranagar back to the planet. In 1998, in Mark Waid hit the reset button by bringing Alanna back to life in two-issue story in JLA. Aside from Adam’s daughter, everything of consequence from Adam Strange had been undone.

So he basically "cliched" the audience by applying more darkness than need be, and surely worse yet, making Adam far less heroic, if at all, and making Ranagar's council look repellent too. The part about the Zeta-beam being designed to teleport a guy to Rann for the purpose of serving as a breeding stud also conflicts with the original takes from the Silver Age. This posting misses, however, that there was a Hal Jordan-starring GL story written by the disgraced Gerard Jones printed in 1993, prior to the Rayner run, where Adam made an appearance, and that story stunk of fishy stuff too. And Bruning didn't even have the courage to discuss any of that in his Comics Journal interview. It's fortunate that dreadful story was jettisoned, but unfortunate the DCU had to collapse afterwards due to the machinations of an editor Bruning himself had a hand in appointing a quarter century ago. As a result, Adam Strange and company still suffered a terrible injustice, as did many other DCU cast members.

What the studio producing Brubaker's Criminal adaptation says in his legal defense

According to Deadline (via AV Club), here's what Amazon/MGM studios says in response to the sexual harassment lawsuit filed against Ed Brubaker:

“His most sensational allegation — that Brubaker pointed a functional firearm at his face and pulled the trigger — is pure invention,” the demurrer adds. “Had that happened, every person in the room, Noohu included, had a duty to report it and in a post-Rust industry on high alert to firearms, someone would have. No one did. Defendants first learned of the supposed incident when Noohu reemerged peddling the story and demanding a payday.” [...]

“The timing of that election gives the game away,” the GT lawyers say of the Sri Lankan American filmmaker who was looking to be made an EP as his PA gig came to an end. “Noohu sat on these supposed claims for twenty months and filed suit on the eve of the press circuit for Criminal. That is the conduct of an opportunist timing his leverage, not a victim seeking redress.”

The part about the pistol is certainly the most questionable, and if the "plaintiff" did this out of spite, perhaps because he's trying to paint himself as a victim based on his Islamic background, that is wrong. And after the Alex Baldwin scandal, yes, it's definitely far more believable that film studios are being more careful not to allow live firearms on set. So, while I don't find Brubaker an appealing writer, and firmly believe he played a big part in bringing down comicdom in more than a quarter century, for now, I will withhold judgement. For all we know, this Noohu is probably a grifter and Islamic victimologist who's trying to get a bigger piece of the pie, and entirely indiscriminate about whether his target's also a leftist. That kind of person is not worth listening to, if it turns out he's filed false complaints.

Social media ruined art before AI did

A writer at the Frederick News-Post says social media played a part in dulling artwork well before AI ever did:

Even before artificial intelligence began delivering its tepid conglomeration of “art” and reducing us all to idiocy, social media was already working to make “art content” look depressingly bland.

I, like many in the profession of comic book art, have dabbled in social media in the vain attempt to muster likes, follows and subscribers and, ostensibly, pick up a commission or two. In reality, I’ve come to realize I was trying to beat back the yawning need for validation by turning to online strangers, while discovering that nearly every one of those strangers only wanted my work if it were free.

Curse my vanity! Damn that impostor syndrome!

Whatever I’m doing doesn’t play well with the new pantheon of algorithmic deities. I’ve failed comprehensively at building an online audience. Honestly, the effort takes time I’d rather put into the work itself. Besides, nobody needs to see my grizzled old face explaining how a pencil works. I’m better suited as an invisible author.

Anyhow, the game is rigged. The house — Meta, TikTok, X and the like — always wins.

You may reasonably detect sour grapes here. Welcome to the vineyard.

I’m writing this especially for young artists starting out because I’d like them to avoid a trap I’ve felt tugging at my own ankles: producing bland, familiar work that people quite like, then mistaking their approval for artistic progress.

Something to consider is that artists who do have talent and draw competently, whether with a cartoonish or serious style, were victimized over the past decade by people who despise creativity, beauty and hated sex-positivity. That's not all, of course. The online neo-communists also made exaggerated or outright false accusations of racism/sexism, and that's one of the reasons we arrived at the sad situation we're at now with the mainstream, if anything. Twitter/X had by far the worst examples of what also became cancel culture, something Mark Millar spoke about in the past year, and it's bound to be years before the damage is mended, if at all.

Artistic voice is that almost indefinable critical quality that sets your work apart, that fits some missing jigsaw piece in a reader’s emotions and creates frisson and resonance, scratching an itch they maybe didn’t know they had. Developing it takes time, experimentation and an embarrassing quantity of output you’d rather nobody saw.

All you’ll get from social media is an audience and a scoreboard.

Consider the sketchbook. Mine needs room for mistakes. That’s rather the point. Yet the online sketchbook tour can look like a succession of finished illustrations, each waiting patiently for its merchandise deal. Nothing ugly. Nothing unresolved. God forbid, a badly drawn hand.

Experimentation can be anathema to the demand for consistently pleasing posts. You try something unfamiliar. It looks awkward, and you haven’t yet worked out whether it’s going anywhere or if it even will. That’s normal, but it makes a poor sales pitch in a feed full of polished drawings.

If you’re starting out, the danger is abandoning that experimentation because nobody clicked “like” before you learned what it might teach you. If every piece must be worth posting, where do you put the work that helps you improve? And where, in the interminable production line of performative “content,” do you find time to get better?

I think the mistake made here, if I'm reading correctly, is asking a potentially anonymous audience to give their stamp of approval, rather than experienced teachers and art critics. Relying only on social media drones is surely worse than relying on what might also be a dishonest teacher. And rest assured, of course mistakes happen, and you can't expect to reach peak talent in a fortnight, though I should note that there's a very sick segment of society that would be more than delighted to deceive, influence and shame somebody into delivering ugly, grotesque artwork that won't please consumers at all, and otherwise end the potential artist's career much sooner than expected. That's why social media is a very poor way of finding approval.

In comics, familiar legacy characters add another distraction. Batman arrives with decades of recognition, familiarity and popularity. We know who and what that character is. Any original character faces a steep hurdle to build an audience.

If Batman brings attention, how many disappointing responses to your own creations do you tolerate before returning to the crowd-pleasing cowl? There’s nothing shameful about drawing him. But I do wonder how much work never develops because its creator decides the audience has already voted.

Then there are the recurring styles. In my feed, I keep encountering rounded “Steven Universe”-like cartoon figures, polished Disney-ish faces, manga-derived expressions and enough decorative crosshatching to suggest the comics boom inflicted some kind of 1990s Stockholm syndrome on a certain generation.

Influence is essential, and we all stand on the shoulders of giants, but the generic reward from social media audiences encourages artists to settle before those influences have been explored, questioned and absorbed into a personal visual language.

A better social media site would probably be Deviant Art, and I vaguely recall Marvel staff once said a long time ago they wanted to hire and audition artists who hosted their artwork there, but in the years since, it's pretty apparent they didn't have faith in themselves, and several years back, they hired terrible scribes, quite possibly also because they're stunningly cheap. DC followed suit. Even today, things haven't recovered much. That's why it really doesn't make much difference whether you seek a job drawing Batman, because even Batbooks are far from selling in millions today, no matter what the press says about the Absolute line, and I would think that, if some publishers wanted to, they could figure out how to promote and market a creator-owned comic without having to worry the mainstream would literally trump all attempts to interest audiences in something unrelated. The superhero genre's long been demolished by PC, and there's opportunities at this point to promote stuff that could be science-fantasy, but doesn't have to be superhero-themed in every way. That's what modern marketers are missing.

I'm sure there's what to learn from an account like this about how an aspiring artist wishes to find a career of some sort. But today's artists have to also consider that an online "audience" isn't really the way to go for seeking approval. If anything, artists who want to actually sell their work physically have to make it possible for consumers of physical media to decide with a finished product. And you need to make sure you can find decent teachers and other such specialists who can tell you whether your artwork's got potential, and encourage the artists to keep working to improve where necessary. One so-called veteran nobody should rely upon, however, is Rob Liefeld, based on how his artwork of the 1990s and 2000s was mediocre or just plain outright atrocious. And as some could tell you, he couldn't draw feet. It's a shame some publishers had to associate with such an incompetent scribe out of the notion they could actually make money based on how poor Liefeld's art was. That Capt. America illustration he turned out in the late 90s where Steve looked like a balloon was a most tellingly awful textbook example of how not to draw an admirable character. And unfortunately, there are all sorts of Liefeld-wannabes in today's industry landscape. Liefeld may try to sound like he isn't so PC himself at times on social media, but he did regrettably precipitate the modern situation back in the day, no thanks to various incompetent editors and publishers who could've avoided employing him if they wanted to.

If one's looking for talented artists and other educators who could be more reliable, they need to look for figures like J. Scott Campbell, to name but one worthwhile example. But of course, they could also look at various examples from throughout the decades to see what artists, old and new, were the most impressive, and that's another good way to develop some good skills. I hope modern artists will consider, and in addition, so long as Marvel and DC are hostage to PC and bad directions, that they'll avoid seeking jobs there at all costs. The creator-owned scene for now can have more potential, and that's where they should exercise their skills. And even consider developing projects that're built more on optimism, much like Superman and Fantastic Four.

Batman's Knightfall becomes an animated cartoon

Inverse told some history of what may be one of the better offerings of the 1990s, the time when Batman's Knightfall event introduced Bane, the hefty villain whose main achievement at the time was breaking Batman's back. A story that's now subject of animated films. The writer spoke with the animation producers, but strangely enough, neither Bane's co-creators Chuck Dixon and Graham Nolan, nor any other connected writers and artists of the time are named for their jobs here. For now, let's take a look at the beginning paragraphs:

Without a doubt, the 1990s were a period of extreme transformation and experimentation for the comic book industry. And depending on who you ask, it wasn’t exactly a great one. The era was dominated by gimmicks like foil and glow-in-the-dark covers, murderous edgelord antiheroes with big guns, hundreds of pockets, and odd things strapped to their legs. This was also the era in which both DC and Marvel became increasingly aware of the spectator market of comic book purchases. DC’s 1992 stunt, The Death of Superman, was designed to sell a special edition comic book, just as much as it was designed to shake up internal narrative continuity. Similarly, in 1994, Hal Jordan went mad with grief after the destruction of his entire city and became the villain Parallax, slaughtering most of the Green Lantern Corps in the Emerald Twilight storyline.

And yet neither event was as daring and complex as the most iconic destruction of one hero from that decade: the breaking of the Bat in Knightfall, a trilogy of storylines that played out over the course of 1993 and 1994 and across no less than seven distinct DC titles. Now, 33 years after Knightfall began, and 14 years after the live-action film The Dark Knight Rises adapted aspects of the storyline, an animated DC film trilogy is faithfully bringing Knightfall to life.

If there's any problem with the 2nd paragraph, it's that it has the effect of making you wonder if the writer really does find what's told in the 1st reprehensible. And Emerald Twilight definitely was. Amazing they admit the Death and Return of Superman was a stunt, because not every mainstream news site's willing to clearly admit that. Also disturbing is that it served as a lead-in to Emerald Twilight, based on how the destruction of Coast City took place in a connecting tale.

It’s impossible to understate just how shocking Knightfall was at the time of release and also how much it permeates Batman media. It’s referenced in the Arkham games and, again, is the partial basis for 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises.

Krieg remembers working across the street from New York’s Forbidden Planet Comics, going in so broke that he’d “just read the comics from the stands.” Morales, somebody who “grew up with the story and was a fan as it was happening,” describes his reaction to joining the project as one of “amazement.” Knightfall was a turning point for the industry as much as it was a turning point for the character of Batman himself – it depicted a vision of the character on the verge of extreme burnout and exhaustion, working beyond his limits while ignoring the lingering trauma of Jason Todd’s murder and Superman’s death.

Neither of which examples are very good, because the former was a cheap way of jettisoning a character based on that he supposedly sent a rapist to his death for scaring an innocent woman into committing suicide. And the latter was just a cheap way of getting short range attention for the Man of Steel, in a year long storyline that later saw the Toyman murder Cat Grant's son. We certainly didn't need the latter example put into effect, mainly because it does leave a bad aftertaste.

If there was anything peculiar about the death of Jason Todd, it's that, if he was trying and failed to defuse a bomb left by the Joker, it didn't disintegrate Todd at all. His body, though badly scarred and dripping with blood, was still largely intact, considering that in reality, it could've been blown to smithereens if struck at close range by an explosion. Batman comics can be as surreal as their more science-fantasy emphasizing couterparts, but if "reality" is really a big deal to the higher echelons, they sure didn't follow through with it there. Though it's decidedly fortunate that, when Bane broke the Bat's back in 1993, it wasn't portrayed graphically. Today, in the Geoff Johns-influenced era, that could all turn out much differently. And back to the cartoon adaptations, there's a notable character who's also making an appearance in them:

Even with those concessions, Batman: Knightfall – Part 1 is still extremely accurate and retains a key part of the original storyline overlooked by most adaptations: Jean-Paul Valley, the replacement Batman who gets a high-tech Batsuit as an upgrade but degenerates into a savage, vicious killer in the mantle. The character debuted two years before Knightfall as an unassuming college graduate, unwittingly raised since birth by the mysterious Order of St. Dumas to become the assassin Azrael. While Bane is the villain with all the pop culture recognition, Azrael was always intended to be the storyline’s final antagonist, an ideological battle between Batman’s strict moral code and the amoral ruthlessness of the antiheroes like Spawn and Cable popular in the 90s – and the movie sets up that conflict firmly by making Jean-Paul the saga’s third main character.

Azrael is introduced in a brutal cold open where Batman catches him in the middle of murdering a gang of criminals and offers him psychological help when he realizes his troubles. According to Morales, that opening “gives you a sense of Azrael and how violent he can be, how he’s not Batman but a darker version that kills. Then it shows you Batman in his peak form before we start to take him down later. I thought it was valuable to establish that this is how good Batman is, and this is how good Azrael is.”

Wow, that's their whole idea of an achievement, huh? Interesting that Azrael's the character who kills more noticeably, and unlike Jason Todd, Valley wasn't bumped off like Todd was, though at the end of the solo series created for Azrael, Valley was put to an end, and his role was later filled by a character named Michael Lane in the mid-2000s. Some could probably wonder if the arguments against killing violent criminals symbolized with Azrael is what led to the leftist hostility against the Punisher years later, even as Wolverine continues to get a free pass on the same acts Frank Castle was depicted performing. It hasn't done mainstream superhero comics any good, of course, and we've seen the effect it's had on readership and sales since.

Much as I think Dixon and Nolan turned out a significant addition to Batman lore of the time, it doesn't sound from this interview like the cartoon producers are truly grateful to the aforementioned twosome, and at this point, what's the use of a cartoon adaptation anyway, in an era where the zygote was ruined by PC and bad management?

Why the late artist Darwyn Cooke took the job drawing Catwoman's 3rd volume

Since the subject of pretentious writer Ed Brubaker recently came up, I found this fluff-coated Popverse article from last May, telling why the late artist Darwyn Cooke accepted the assignment of drawing the Catwoman volume Brubaker wrote in the early 2000s:

Catwoman has nine lives, and one of her most notable lives was her 2001 revamp by Ed Brubaker and Darwyn Cooke. The character’s previous run had mostly portrayed her as a cunning thief in skimpy clothing, but Brubaker and Cooke gave her a new look, a new supporting cast, and a new mission as the protector of Gotham’s East End. According to Darwyn Cooke, who passed away in 2016, this was a dealbreaker for him.

“Going back to Catwoman, when I was asked if I wanted to get involved in that, I said, ‘On one condition. She has to be completely redesigned. And I have to know that the writer believes, as well as I know, that this is a book that should be aimed at women, not at teenage boys,’” Darwyn Cooke says during a panel at Toronto Fan Expo 2009.

“And I said if that’s the approach we’re going to take, then I’m happy to get involved, because this is a great character, and it gives us an opportunity to build her back up and redeem her as a person and get girls reading comics again and excited about a character that they can relate to. I’ve always felt that this is an important thing that any sort of creator should be trying to consider.”

It’s good to have nine lives, and it’s even better if one of them is penciled by Darwyn Cooke.

I think a challenging query to be raised here is - what's so wrong with writing a story appealing to teen boys? Or, who says the same approach won't appeal to teen girls as well? In hindsight, I'm really not impressed with Cooke as an artist, and IIRC, at the time this took place, DC made efforts to do away with the blue shadings from previous designs for Batman's costume, and make entirely black. Catwoman's costume underwent a similar change, of course. But was her previous outfit really skimpy? I think during the 80s, Selina Kyle had one with cleavage, but I don't recall if what she wore in the 90s drawn by Jim Balent had, so this is another unshockingly sloppy take on history.

That said, did women really flock en masse to Brubaker and Cooke's take on the Feline Fatale? Perhaps the following I found on CBR's forums from 2016 can give a clue:

I did some research on Catwoman's sales from 1994 to 2016 on comichron.com and diamondcomics.com. I've been wondering why Catwoman sales have been so low, especially why they plummeted a few issues ago since they've been the best issues I've read in many years. Now it is assumed the comic is cancelled because it was not mentioned as being included during the Rebirth event.

Catwoman vol 2 (1993-2001) maintained much, much better sales than vol 3 or vol 4. In fact, the final issue of vol 2 in 2001 (the worst selling of the series) sold almost as many copies as vol 3 issue 25 (by Brubaker) in 2003, about 26,000 copies. The 90's Catwoman never ranked below 100 in the monthly Top 100 Comics chart. It only dropped below a rank of 75 around the Fall of 2000. It almost always sold as many issues as Robin, Supergirl, Birds of Pray, often outselling them and usually outsold Wonder Woman consistently.

Volume 3, which ran from 2001-2008, did not sell near as well. Its sales dropped from 49,000 copies of issue #1 to 26,500 copies of issue #12 in only a year. It consistently ranked well under 75 on the Top 100 chart, oftentimes dropping below 100. Its final issue only sold 15,000 copies.

Volume 4, the New 52, sold a little better than vol 3. Issue #1 sold 53,670 copies, but issue #20 was down to 26,900 copies, ranking 85th on the chart and was then one of the 3 worst selling DC titles. Sales from that point on were consistent until issue 42 only sold 22,000 copies. Then issue 47, Frank Tieri's first issue, plummeted to only 15,000 copies, ranking 166 on The Top 200 chart for December 2015.

These sales figures make it pretty obvious that the stories told and the artwork used used in Vol 2 in the 90's was significantly* more desirable than that of Vol 3 & 4.

I believe there were a few problems with Vol 3 from the beginning of it. First, I believe the new costume was simply unattractive. Darwyn Cooke said he wanted to tone down Catwoman's sexiness and make her look more practical and utilitarian. And he gave her bug-eye goggles. Catwoman became the opposite of sexy and I think that was a bad idea.

Next I think focusing on Catwoman in the role of a vigilante sworn to protect Gotham's seedy East End, where she has a controversial history of working as dominatrix, probably wasn't ideal for most comic readers. I think it was too dark and controversial for general audiences to get into. This was not the Catwoman that the public was used to seeing, and not what they wanted for her comic. She has always been glamorous and sensuous. She was fun because she was naughty, but still helped people often. This new Catwoman was a complete opposite, so people didn't buy it.

Vol 4, the New 52, had prettier artwork but the same bug-eye goggles, Emma Peele outfit, and bulky boots. She was a theif again but she was younger and dumber. And she was having sex with Batman while the two of them kept their masks on in the first issue. Yeah because when you wear a mask over the top half of your face, the person you are frequently screwing will never find out your true identity. This is just bad writing, which simply got worse over the next few years and the sales kept dropping.*

It's tragic that the past few issues have such low sales, and that Catwoman won't be included in DC's Rebirth. Frank Tieri's issues have been recieving great reviews, especially issue #50.

But I hope that DC has big plans for Catwoman to make her more attractive, more exciting, and more successful.

Thoughts??

Unfortunately, as the wokeness of the past decade made clear, there was no reason for optimism, and besides, Identity Crisis also led to ruination. IIRC, there was a story with Catwoman shortly afterwards where a retcon took place claiming she'd been influenced by Zatanna, quite possibly at Batman's request, to reform Selina. In other words, according to that tale, Selina did not reform of her own accord and thinking, which makes a mockery and insult to the older works of better writers.

Cooke's claims also ring hollow when you consider that at least a few women actually worked on the Feline Fatale years earlier. For example, Mindy Newell, and then Jo Duffy, who wrote the first 14 issues of the 90s series. So Cooke and Brubaker were insulting a woman who had no issue with depicting Selina Kyle as sexy. A most disgraceful distortion Cooke pulled there, and if memory serves, Brubaker not only implausibly revived Holly Robinson, a character originally seen in Frank Miller's Year One tale from 1987, Brubaker even turned her into a lesbian for the sake of it.

Now I'll give Cooke this: he did the right thing to say he didn't want to see the kind of one-sided sexual violence seen in Identity Crisis become normalized as offensive, sensationalistic plot devices. But if he once said he didn't want to see once heterosexual characters be turned LGBT overnight, he contradicted that, in a manner of speaking, by working with a writer as overrated and exploitive as Brubaker, who did something like that, certainly in Gotham Central with Greg Rucka, where they changed the Renee Montoya character to lesbian. Cooke also continued to work with DC even after Identity Crisis came out, and it can be validly argued that in doing so, Cooke wasn't following through on his arguments convincingly. Besides, he also once led a chummy connection with the disgraced Gerard Jones, and that too doesn't reflect well on Cooke in hindsight.

Cooke may have made a few valid statements, but he was apparently an early example of a wokester, and one can only wonder what he thought of his take on Catwoman selling considerably lower than the volume drawn by Balent, and first written by Duffy. Cooke not only insulted the aforementioned two, he also insulted plenty of other, more talented artists who came before Balent, like those who drew Catwoman in the 1970s. Having artists like Cooke on the job is sadly not better at all.

And as for the mention of Frank Tieri, wasn't he the writer who derailed Wolverine in the last 2 years of the 1988-2003 series? One more reason why I'd rather not buy his take on Catwoman either.

Luton's Comicon pays tribute to Steve Dillon

Luton Today says their local convention is going to pay tribute to artist Steve Dillon, who passed away a decade ago:

Luton Comic Con 2026 will pay tribute to one of the town’s most celebrated creative talents with a special exhibition dedicated to the life and work of legendary comic book artist Steve Dillon.

The exhibition, which Luton Comic Con CIC describes as a special final tribute to Dillon’s legacy, will showcase his remarkable career and lasting contribution to the world of comics.

[...] Dillon’s professional career began when he was just 16 years old, when he was hired to work for Marvel UK’s Hulk Weekly. His early Marvel UK work included drawing Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., as well as work connected to The Hulk, before he went on to establish himself across some of the most influential British and American comics.

That's pretty interesting he had Nick Fury to his credits. But what else was he know for?

He would later become renowned for his work on titles including Judge Dredd, Hellblazer and The Punisher, as well as co-creating the acclaimed Preacher with writer Garth Ennis. His distinctive storytelling and character work made him one of the most respected British comic artists of his generation.

Would that be Ennis' take on the Punisher they're referring to? Because Ennis set in motion the destruction of Frank Castle, turning it into a political mess 2 decades ago, and his take is something to admire? Though it does make me wonder what the late Gerry Conway might've thought of it.

Whatever the quality of Dillon's art, the sad part's that he was apparently one of a whole ocean of scribes who veered to the darkness, as his resume suggests. So what's so "remarkable" about that? I don't see it. There's bound to be only so many artists and writers who dealt more with the bright side - and Superman's building on that angle - who don't get as much attention as artists like Dillon may be getting (Al Plastino, for example). Seriously, it's time to give them more spotlight too.

Johnny Cash's evangelical comic from the Bronze Age

Relevant magazine wrote about a Christian-themed comic produced by singer Johnny Cash in 1976, illustrated by Al Hartley, who'd worked for Archie for 3 decades or so:

In 1976, at the height of his fame, Cash handed his life story to a 32-page evangelical comic book. It was called ‘Hello, I’m Johnny Cash,’ it cost less than fifty cents, and it was drawn by a man who spent three decades drawing Archie.

Z2 Comics is reissuing it for its 50th anniversary, on September 23.

The original came from Spire Christian Comics, an imprint of the religious publisher Fleming H. Revell, which spent the ’70s turning testimonies into newsprint — ‘The Cross and the Switchblade,’ ‘God’s Smuggler,’ ‘The Hiding Place.’ The script was by Billy Zeoli, an evangelical film producer who ran Gospel Films and sent Gerald Ford a weekly devotional the entire time Ford was in the White House. [...]

The book does not sand the story down. There’s a panel of Cash backstage surrounded by women, thinking “IT’S GONNA BE TOUGH LIVIN’ A CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THIS BUSINESS!!!” There’s the word DECEPTION in red across a spilled pill bottle. There’s a phone call where June Carter tells him she has thrown his pills away and he asks what he’s supposed to do now, and she tells him to read the Gideon Bible in his room, and he asks her to read hers to him instead. Philippians 4:13 runs across a close-up of his eyes. He takes more pills on the next page anyway, and there’s a police car.

The last page has him in a boat with June and their son, holding up a fish, over Proverbs 22:6. [...]

The reissue runs $9.99, limited to 1,000 copies, with new covers by Chip Kidd and Tim Bradstreet and an essay by comics writer Alex Segura. [...]

That they're charging even close to 10 dollars for this is the only problem here, because if this isn't something book length, why force anybody to pay even that much for a story that's just 32 pages? That's decidedly unfair to anybody who thinks this makes a worthy read. Stories like this, biographical or otherwise, are unlikely to be published today by the majors, based on all the PC that's brought down entertainment and morale, and charging $10 for something short is no improvement.

Rolling Stone has a surprising thing to tell about Cash's history though:

Johnny Cash was a lot of things — devout Christian, country superstar, anti-Vietnam activist, variety show host. But folks might not remember him as the writer and star of his own comic book, Hello, I’m Johnny Cash. Now, that little-known comic is getting a 50th-anniversary rerelease from Z2 Comics, set to come out on Wednesday, Sept. 23, which is Local Comic Store Day.

Wow, depending how you view this, it's rather surprising a guy who's said to be pious would oppose a war against communism at the time. If he didn't denounce the Viet Cong, that's honestly a problem, because we shouldn't devalue the lives of innocent foreigners, and it was the failure to destroy the commie HQ in northern Vietnam that made the war a big loss, and one that leftists exploited for destroying morale ever further.

I think Judeo-Christian-themed comics like these, along with biographical ones, can have potential, but that doesn't mean we should approve of people taking lenient views on how to deal with barbarism that grows overseas. That's also what led to tragedies like September 11, 2001, and importing bad ideologies like Islam to the USA only made the situation worse. I'm sure Cash was a talented musician in his time. But it's a shame he had to be the kind of guy who may have catered to the wrong crowd regarding how to wage a war against tyrants. That didn't improve the situation in the long run at all.

A lawsuit was filed against Ed Brubaker, but because of the politics involved, judgement should be withheld for now

Brubaker, a comics writer who's been in the business for 35 years, may be one of the most left-wing around, and overrated. But the following news on Deadline about a sexual/racial harassment lawsuit that's been filed against him contains clues why it may not be a good idea to take it at immediate face value:

What may or may not have gone down on Prime Video‘s upcoming Criminal now looks set to end up in a California courtroom.

“This action arises from the sustained sexual, racial, national origin, and religious harassment that Plaintiff ljaaz Noobu, a Sri Lankan American filmmaker with fourteen years of experience in the film industry, endured while working on the production of the forthcoming television series Criminal,” states a 12-claim complaint filed earlier this week in L.A. Superior Court. [...]

“Hired in February 2023 as a production assistant to showrunner and Executive Producer Ed Brubaker, Plaintiff came to the production eager to contribute his talent and technical knowledge to a marquee project, the pretty plainspoken jury trial-seeking document from Burbank attorney Fahim Rahman says. “Instead, he was subjected to a workplace made toxic and abusive by the very individuals entrusted with authority over it.”

With claims that Noobu was subjected to cracks about rape and “demeaning stereotypes” for being the only Muslim on set and asked by Brubaker if the PA was a supporter of Hamas, the suit seeks a variety of unspecified damages. Also named in the complaint as defendants alongside Brubaker are Amazon Services, MGM, Criminal EP Phillip Barnett and others as defendants.

Now, Brubaker is but one of many pretentious scribes in today's landscape, and in hindsight, I don't like his Batman work from the early 2000s. But when I noticed the plaintiff's an Islamic adherent, I had to give pause to taking the claims at face value, realizing it's possible this could be trumped up accusations. That doesn't mean it's impossible for a non-Muslim leftist to abuse a Muslim though, recalling there was an incident in NYC over 15 years ago where a leftist attacked a Muslim cab driver, and a few years ago, a Pakistani Muslim in Seattle, Washington, nearly had his son taken from him for the sake of "transing". But it's clear in the long run that negativity from leftists towards Islamists is rare, especially based on where they're going now with choosing political candidates.

I do wonder however, what Brubaker thinks of Hamas? Or the plaintiff himself? That's what isn't clear from this article. Somehow, it's scarier to think what Brubaker could think, based on any leftist credentials he retains. But if it turns out the plaintiff comes within even miles of supporting such a repulsive bunch, then I'm not sympathetic to him.

For now, we'll have to withhold judgement and let any ensuing trial determine whether the accusations are factual or false. However this turns out though, I'm not interested in Brubaker's resume.

An upcoming comics art festival in Los Angeles

The Hollywood Reporter announced there's a special convention taking place in the next 2 months in Los Angeles, primarily for artists. Unsurprisingly, the guests include at least a few pretentious modern scribes:

The world of comic art is being elevated to new heights thanks to the medium’s prominence in the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Arts.

Now, two comic art representatives are launching a two-day fete that seeks to keep the art form’s momentum away from the days of hunched-over collectors thumbing through unprotected pages in Tupperware crates in the basements of bargain hotels.

Taking place Nov. 7 and Nov 8 at Los Angeles’ gilded and storied Biltmore Hotel, the inaugural ICON Festival of Comic & Narrative Art will be a two-day celebration of original art by some of the most popular and influential contemporary comic book artists working in the medium.

Superstar artists Nick Dragotta, who currently pencils the industry’s top-selling Absolute Batman for DC, Daniel Warren Johnson, the Eisner-winner behind last year’s Absolute Batman Annual no. 1 and the recent Transformers for Image, and Invincible artist Ryan Ottley will be among those on hand to take part of the show, which will also feature a significant exhibition of more than 100 original works by Alex Ross, the celebrated comic painter.

What's so special about the artists who've worked on DC's Absolute line that isn't so special about those who could be working far more on independent productions? Dragotta and Johnson are actually pretty obvious choices, IMO. As for Ross, I don't deny he's talented in his own way, and he did make a statement I appreciate years ago, but even he doesn't feel like a big deal. Certainly not in an era where the comics he admires were ruined by Orwellianism.

Tickets – VIP, two-day, and one-day passes – go on sale today. The VIP package will include a signed giclee of a new Ross painting of an angel representing the Biltmore Hotel and meant to channel Old Hollywood. Ross is the artist whose seminal work Marvels and Kingdom Come opened doors for painted comics. His latest work, the ambitious graphic novel Marvel Dimensions (Abrams Comics Arts), hit stores last week.

“This is not your usual comic book event,” he said in a statement. “This is a luxury event, being held where the Academy Awards were first conceived.”

Maybe that's just the problem. Wouldn't that suggest this is for wealthy collectors, not for the middle-class buyer who may not be able to afford what they're offering? And Dimensions, as noted before, is just a modern retelling of the Golden Age Human Torch origins through a forced lens of darkness. What do we need that kind of angle for? Ross is actually undermining his previous objections to what Identity Crisis was built upon by going through with a project hinging on darkness.

If this turns out to be another excuse for speculators to rummage through and lap up as many supposedly valuable items as possible, it'll only continue to confirm what's wrong with conventions like these, and make a mockery of those centered around artists. Those who consider themselves talented shouldn't participate in something that's more about sales than storytelling value.